CONTINUOUS SPEECH 73
do, either unconnectedly or one after another in an easily dis-
tinguished order. Here, for example, is the story of how David
slew Goliath, the narrative style of which faithfully represents
the tense sequences of the original Hebrew.1
And it came to pass that when the Philistine arose and came nigh
to meet David, that David hasted and ran toward the army to meet
the Philistine. And David put his hand in his bag and drew thence
a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead; and
he fell on his'face to the ground.
On the basis of the evidence supplied in the Oxford English
Dictionary we may safely say that the other 'connectives' first
acquired by English children are those which were first acquired
by the race. For instance, the first quoted use of some of our
commonest connectives is as follows: and, c. A.D. 700; where,
950; while, 971; when, 1000; who, 1297; which, 1300; because,
I3°55 although, 1325. The appearance of some of the latest
acquired of these words in the speech of little children may be
regarded as a sure sign of linguistic progress.
The introduction into English of forms of sentence-structure
more elaborate than the Old Testament writers used was due to
the study of the classical writers of Greece and Rome. Transla-
tors first of all and original writers afterwards adopted the com-
plex sentence-structure of the Greek and Latin authors as best
suited to the expression of involved ideas. The participial and
absolute forms of construction, for example, which are not needed
in the faithful translation of the Old Testament Hebrew (and,
indeed, are rare in English everyday speech), appear frequently
in the translation of the New Testament Greek, where they are
quite in place; as, for instance, in the introduction to the Sermon
on the Mount (Matthew, v):
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and
when he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his
mouth, saying . . .
and, again, in the Acts of the Apostles, where we read, for instance
-(xxviii, 30-33):
And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house and
received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God,
and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with
all confidence, no man forbidding him.2
1 See Encyclopedia Britamica, Ninth Edition, xi, 596, and Fourteenth Edition,
>a We shall take up this subject again in Chapter IV when dealing with the develop-
ment of the child's powers of written expression.